Hostel (2005) Directed by Eli Roth
It was the mid to late 2000s and a new craze in horror took place, this craze was referred to now as torture porn. The subgenre was known for over the top graphic gore and torture. There were two film series that stood above the others: Saw and Hostel. While Saw had like 47 sequels, Hostel had only 2. The two series had more than one thing in common, intense gore, dark scenery, ruthless murders/torture, and sequels that were progressively worse. Although Hostel is not nearly the movie that the original Saw was, it still is a good quality horror movie with a story that is more believable than your everyday slasher or ghost story.
A couple college buddies Paxton and Josh are traveling across Europe with their Icelandic friend Oli. Their trip to Amsterdam is full of weed smoking, drinking, dancing, and attempts to score with hot women. They meet a guy named Alexei, whom shows them pictures of some of the most beautiful women you would ever see naked with him in bed. He says those women are from Slovakian hostel that is constantly filled with babes. Being dumb college guys that are just looking for a hot place to put their dicks, they go right to Slovakia. The three guys board the train to Slovakia and sit next to a strange Dutch businessman. When they arrive at the hostel, Natalya and Svetlana, two gorgeous Slovakian women, greet them. The girls invite the guys to the spa and later to a disco. That night, Paxton and Josh get deep into Natalya and Svetlana, while Oli bangs the desk girl, vala. The next morning they notice that Oli didn’t return and they can’t get ahold of him. A Japanese girl named Kana, whom shows them a picture of Oli and her friend Yuki who has also disappeared, approaches them.
Though Josh is ready to leave, Paxton talks him into staying one more night, bad idea. That night Josh and Paxton are slipped mickeys and Josh stumbles back to the hotel room and Paxton passes out in a storage room at the disco. Josh comes to in a dungeon-like room, and is approached by a guy in an apron and surgical mask with a power drill. The man drills holes into his chest and legs. The man then removes the mask revealing himself as the Dutch businessman, and tells Josh of his failed dream to be a surgeon. After Josh begs to be released, the Dutch guy slices his Achilles tendons and removes the restraints. Josh stands up only to fall over and crawls to the door, the Dutch man then slices Josh’s throat open with a scalpel.
Paxton wakes up in the storage room and makes his way back to the hostel. He gets annoyed with the front desk person, whom assists that he already checked out. When he returns to the room he is greeted by two gorgeous women who invite him to the spa in the same way Natalya and Svetlana did. Paxton tracks down Natalya and Svetlana to a pub and questions them about Josh. Natalya tells him that Josh and Oli are visiting an art exhibit, and she agrees to take him there. They go to an old factory and Paxton is horrified to find Josh’s mutilated body being stitched together by the Dutch guy. Paxton is then grabbed by two big dudes that drag him into a cell, where he is tied to a chair and joined minutes later by a German guy named Johann.
Johann is really bizarre, he walks towards Paxton with a pair of large sheers snipping them at his face, and he cuts a lock of his hair off and puts it into a ziplock bag. Then Johann grabs a gardening tool and stabs it into Paxton’s chest while he pleads to him in German. Johann begins to act strangely and yells to the guard who comes in and ball gags Paxton. Then you hear a chainsaw revving up, and Johann walks towards Paxton, putting the saw inches from his face. Paxton begins to barf, but with the ball gag on he starts choking, Johann quickly takes the gag off and cuts off two of Paxton’s fingers as he screams in horror. The chainsaw frees Paxtons hands and Johann runs towards him with the chainsaw and slips causing him to fall and have the chainsaw bury into his leg. Paxton breaks free and shoots Johann in the head with a pistol. A guard comes into the room, but Paxton shoots him and escapes the cell. He then enters another room and hides in the bottom of a cart filled with corpses and limbs. A butcher takes the corpses to the bottom floor to be incinerated, and Paxton bashes him with a sledgehammer. He then takes an elevator to the top floor and enters a dressing room, he changes into business clothes, and meets a psycho American guy whom thinks Paxton is another customer. The guy talks in detail about how he wants to murder someone so bad.
Paxton escapes the factory but returns after he hears cries for help. He enters another room and discovers that Kana, the Japanese girl from earlier is getting tortured by the psycho American dude, whom is taking a blowtorch to her face. Paxton kills the guy and grabs Kana to flee the building. They get into a stolen car and take off while being pursued by guards. While driving, Paxton sees Natalya, Svetlana, and Alexei and runs them down with the car. Also along the way, Paxton gives the gang of young violent kids a huge bag of candy. The kids attack the guards and cave in one guy’s skull with a big rock. They make their way to the train station, but after seeing her face in the reflection of some glass, Kana leaps in front of a train and kills herself. This creates a huge bloody distraction and Paxton boards a train unnoticed.
Once on the train, Paxton hears the Dutch guy’s voice. When the train stops in Vienna, Paxton follows him into a bathroom and throws the Elite Hunting Club’s card under his stall. When the Dutch guy grabs it, Paxton grabs his hand cuts his pinky and ring finger off with a scalpel, the same fingers he is missing on his hand. He then kicks in the door and nearly drowns the guy in the toilet, but allows him to see his reflection on a metallic box and slits his throat with a scalpel. Paxton leaves and boards another train.
This movie has some pretty realistic gore and gruesome deaths. I find this movie to be creepier than most movies because I believe stuff like this happens probably daily somewhere in the world because lets face it, the world is full of sick fucks. You can never be too careful going to another country, especially one with such sketchy things going on like Eastern Europe. I love the transition of how Paxton acts. In the beginning he’s a douchebag that just wants to bang chicks and party, then at the end he is caring and a badass. He saves Kana then murders that Dutch idiot. The scene where Paxton removes Kana’s disfigured eyeball is kind of fake and cheesy, literally it looks like nacho cheese oozes out of the hole. This isn’t the most brutal and hard to watch movie I’ve ever seen, I have seen A Serbian Film, but it does have some cringe worthy moments. When Josh falls over from his achilles tendons being cut, that’s disgusting and I can feel my ankles aching thinking about it. The ending chase and escape is super tense, you get a knot in your stomach watch it. Around any corner could be someone that’s part of the club trying to bring Paxton and Kana back to the factory. Hostel isn’t perfect, it has its fair share of eye rolling moments, like the couple in the hostel drugged out of their minds fucking for hours. A couple times I rolled my eyes at Oli and his blatantly forward attitude. I thought Oli was a fake character, no one like that could exist. Then when I was in college I met a Turkish student named Volkan, Volkan loved the ladies and was rather straightforward when he hit on them. He was a fun loving guy that was always good for a laugh. He once told us all of his family died and he had no where to go after college, after all of our hearts sunk and I put my arm around him, he said “just kidding, they’re fine” and we had a good laugh because he totally got us. So remember that no matter how unbelievable a character is, there is always a Volkan. Ok back to the movie…it is beautifully shot. The color pallet of the scenes is dreary and hopeless, which adds to the feeling of the characters in the movie. I couldn’t imagine being captured in a foreign country and tortured like that. Eli Roth really is a genius and if you say otherwise you really don’t understand horror cinema. While his writing can be questionable at times, his videography is exceptional. I would give Hostel an A-, it is beautifully shot, it is intense, but some scenes are brutal and it is not something I can watch on a daily basis. If you haven’t seen this movie, watch it! It isn’t just gore and pointless torture, the story is great and the acting is decent.
